I’m doing an experiment with one of my clients, Luggage 4 Less. They’re basically a luggage store that needs a lot more sales. I added a shopping cart to their site, and did some search engine stuff, but alas no sales in the first month. However, one of the keys of good SEO is to add keyword-laden links to things like “extra large suitcase” and “extra large luggage“. Google results should vastly improve. I don’t want to black hat this site though, I hate black hat SEO. Maybe I can hire a decent graphic designer to overhaul the really really bad design of the site.

So let’s see how this affects rankings. . .

Share this:

Like this:

There’s a running joke among hackers that “farmers didn’t invent tractors, they were busy farming”. Meaning that breakthrough ideas don’t come from experts in their industry. The reason is is that the closer an expert is to how something works now, the harder it is to imagine a new and better way of doing things. It’s just the way the brain works, it gets caught up in cliche patterns. Solutions are often not “hard”, but they require cognitive shifts in perception which are simply invisible to the people doing them. As I stated in a previous blog post, the ancient Incas couldn’t see the wheel, even though it’s an obvious idea to us. They manually hauled the stones up the hill or whatever to build their pyramids.

I said this once and I’ll say it again. . . intelligence is overrated in problem solving. More information/intelligence is not needed to solve problems, just a rearrangement of current information and a shift in perception.

Share this:

Like this:

Gee, the federal reserve can’t account for 9 trillion dollars. Words can’t describe this following video. Is anyone minding the store at the Federal Reserve?

I’m telling you, we are going to get a massive amount of inflation. Be prepared, go to the red cross site at http://tinyurl.com/m5ol66 and buy emergency provisions. You might also want to buy some guns for your house because there is going to be a huge amount of civil unrest.

Share this:

Like this:

Get it? His nose only grows when he lies. So if he’s telling the truth, he’s really lying and his nose will grow. On the other hand, if his nose grows, he speaks the truth and then his nose won’t grow. Either way, the statement turns in on itself. His nose is both growing and not growing. It’s doing both, none, either and or. In a way, it’s like saying “this statement is false”. As soon as you declare it to be true, it immediately turns on itself and becomes false.

Zen buddhism taps and remarks upon a similar principle. It’s a concept that can’t be understood with logic and can’t be encompassed by human thought. It can only be realized.

Share this:

Like this:

Let’s say for a moment that you are presented with a seemingly impossible task. Say, to walk on water. Many people may dismiss the idea as “ludicrous” and “impossible”.

This is where lateral thinking comes in. Lateral thinking allows you to come up with the idea of, say, freezing the lake and THEN walking over it. At that point, it’s simple. A lot of people will dismiss this as “cheating”, but is it really? Was it listed as a constraint? Why can’t you freeze a lake? It’s been done before. And, then again, what is it that you are REALLY trying to accomplish? Is it to walk on water or do you really just need to cross the lake?

One of the big problems with problem solving isn’t intelligence or complex solutions. It’s the ability to think outside the scope of the framework (“thinking outside the box”). Even smart people can’t do it. The ancient Incas, with all their knowledge and technology, failed to see the wheel. Do you honestly feel that this same cognitive blindness doesn’t occur to you?

If you are a startup guy, a hacker, or someone who just has a “tough problem”, try reading this book:

The main point of it is that you don’t have to be Isaac Newton to come up with clever ideas. There’s just a lot of cognitive tricks in there that can help you understand the problem/solution from a different perspective.

Share this:

Like this:

What’s getting popular amongst the hacker crowd is “co-working”. It’s basically when you get together a bunch of free-lancers and put them in an office-like room and have them work on their individual projects. It’s a place to go other than home. It’s a place to enforce discipline. And maybe you don’t need or want a full-time office. It’s cool because if you get a good group, you can all bounce ideas off each other at the water cooler or something. It’s kind of a social scene too. Here, check it out: http://wiki.workatjelly.com/jellyla

I get this feeling this could be all the rage soon. I can open up a co-working facility, and sell health-club like memberships. I’ll still generously donate to jelly LA and let them have their meeting here for free though. It’s the hippie in me I guess.

Anyways, some bad-ass programmers go to these things. It’s good to rub elbows with these guys. . .

Share this:

Like this:

Here’s my prediction. The fed will continue their “quantitative easing” policy for the near future. The chinese and other foreign lenders will see that they are getting paid in watered-down US dollars and there will be a run on the currency. This will cause hyperinflation to happen overnight and there will be mass pandemonium in the streets. My guess is that this should happen in the next year or two.

Share this:

Like this:

I’m trying to do some consulting to make up for lost revenue so I added a shopping cart for the vintage luggage place next door. No, I didn’t do the design, the owner didn’t want to hire a decent designer so I just wrote some shopping cart software to go on top of the site they already had. I get a percentage of sales from this, so hopefully this won’t be wasted time.